"Akira Kurosawa." In: The cinema of cruelty : from Bunuel to Hitchcock / by Andre Bazin ; edited and with an introduction by Francois Truffaut ; translated by Sabine d' Estree with the assistance of Tiffany Fliss. 1st ed.
New York : Seaver Books, 1982.

"Men with swords and men with suits : the cinema of Akira Kurosawa." In: Classical Japanese cinema revisited / by Catherine Russell.
New York : Continuum, c2011.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1993.5.J3 R87 2011

Varley, H. Paul

"Culture in the Present Age." In: Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader.
/ edited by Nancy G. Hume. p. 295-340.
Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, c1995.
SUNY series in Asian studies development

"The Phenomenology of Japanese Cinema: A Husserlian Intervention in the Theory of Cinematic Representation." (Phenomenology in Film and Television)
Quarterly Review of Film and Video v12, n3 (Oct, 1990):9 (11 pages).
UC users only

Japanese film director Kurosawa Akira is considered a legend in the country's movie industry. Akira, who died in Sep 1998, was well-known for the movie 'Shichinin no Samurai' (Seven Samurai), a 1954 film about medieval samurai warriors considered a classic worldwide. The director's first film was 'Sugata Sanshiro' (Sanshiro Sugata) in 1943, while his last film, 'Madadayo,' was made in 1993. Former director Yamamoto Kajiro, whom Akira worked for as an assistant in 1936, recognized and encouraged him to development his talent in film directing.

The giant Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa was an expert and mentor for many film writers. The most notable characters in Kurosawa's films are not the emperors or business titans, but those of lesser occupations such as bodyguards, hunters, teachers and grandmothers. Though he was himself referred to as emperor, he was prouder of being sensei, which means master, warrior, mentor and teacher.

"Akira Kurosawa's Yume, or Dreams (1990), is one of Kurosawa's last films, made when the filmmaker was nearly 80. It is a retrospective look at his life, conveyed in representations of eight purported dreams. The eight episodes are quite distinct and, taken together, constitute no obvious narrative, although Zvika Serper makes an interesting case for their unity. Unlike Kurosawa's delightfully chatty memoir, Something Like an Autobiography, Yume is often lyrical and reflective. It is quite distinct from the action films for which the director is famous. Thus, many of Kurosawa's fans have expressed disappointment in the film-even some of the most avid Kurosawa watchers have found it self-indulgent and unimpressive. Yet several of the episodes are beautiful. The slender thread of autobiography that connects the episodes of Yume also ties it to many self-portraits made by modern artists in various media, most of which presume liberally on their audiences as their makers stake their claims to genius." [Communication Abstracts]

The structure, content, means of expression, philosophical thought, and images in Kurosawa's "Yume" ("Dreams" 1990), it is argued, offer an unconscious reflection of the traditional aristocratic no theater in particular, as well as of other Japanese folkloristic and aesthetic sources. [FIAF]

"High and Low: art cinema and pulp fiction in Yokohama."
In: Film adaptation. Film adaptation / edited and with an introduction by James Naremore. p. 172-189. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2000.

A comparison of filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' and author Nikolai Gogol's 'The Overcoat' is discussed. Issues concerning the definition of cinematic metaphor, and the use of the grotesque and metonymy are addressed.

"War and Pastoral: The Treatment of Landscape and Value in Kurosawa's Kagemusha." In: Apocalyptic Visions Past and Present : selected papers from the eighth and ninth annual Florida State University Conferences on Literature and Film. / Edited by JoAnn James and William J. Cloonan. pp: 48-53. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, c1988.

Provides background for Akira Kurosawa's planning of Ran, analyzes the film (comparing it with other film versions--by Peter Brook , G. M. Kozintsev, and Jonathan Miller-- and concludes with commentary on Ran and Shakespeare's King Lear.

Akira Kurosawa's movie 'Ran' makes use of gender reversals to emphasize the Shakespearian tragedy of the story while introducing the topic of women's power in society. The movie is a samurai version of 'King Lear', with a revenge plot motivated by a woman's desire to avenge her family and bring down Japanese rulers. Lear's daughters are instead male samurais, and the male characters Cornwall, Albany, Edmund and Edgar are incorporated into the women Lady Sue and Kaede.

Akira Kurosawa's film 'Ran,' an adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'King Lear,' preserves much of the play's animal imagery while tranforming it for a Japanese audience. Kurosawa uses the Japanese aesthetic of wabi, which values the practice of restraint in expression, to make the animal images resonate with his audience. Both Shakespeare and Kurosawa frequently employ animal imagery in their works. Both favor positive horse images and negative ones pertaining to dogs. They are often more sympathetic to the quarry than to the hunter. They also compare women to animals more often than they do men.

"The writer examines the issue of historical responsibility in the relationship between Akira Kurosawa's 1985 film Ran and Shakespeare's King Lear. In Ran, the personal as addressed in King Lear is not replaced but located within the family as the institution that mediates societal violence; this mediation ensures that the personal is inevitably political and historical. At the core of this exploration of personal response and responsibility is an understanding that the sense of sight is a socializing medium and, as such, provides a basis for human disposition in a violent and possessive world; moreover, in the blind character Tsurumaru, Ran also addresses the human agency that escapes social definition and raises the possibility of thinking a different response and historical destiny. Ran thus not only radically revises the theme of eyesight and blindness in King Lear but also defines a means to responsibility (both a style and an ethic of responding) in its engagement with history." [Art Index]

"Uses the theory of André Lefevere dealing with the effects of cultural poetics and ideology upon translation to explain how Akira Kurosawa modifies King Lear in Ran (q.v.). Kurosawa makes a contemporary political statement by combining the stylized qualities of the noh play with the figures of Hidetora and his three sons drawn from Japanese history." [WSB Online]

An analysis is presented on the role of blood and lineage in Akira Kurosawa's film 'Ran', an adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. Topics include the significance in which each character's death is depicted, whether onscreen, off-screen or fadeout, and whether spilled blood, representing honor and family, is shown.

Serper, Zvika.

"The bloodied sacred pine tree: a dialectical depiction of death in Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran'." (Akiro Kurosawa)(Critical Essay.Journal of Film and Video v52, n2 (Summer, 2000):13 (15 pages).

'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran' are Akira Kurosawa's adaptations of William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear,' respectively. Both films are influenced by conventions from Japan's no theater, especially in their depictions of death.

An analysis is presented on the role of blood and lineage in Akira Kurosawa's film 'Ran', an adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. Topics include the significance in which each character's death is depicted, whether onscreen, off-screen or fadeout, and whether spilled blood, representing honor and family, is shown.

Rashomon; a film by Akira Kurosawa from the filmscript by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto. Consulting editor: Donald Richie. New York, Grove Press [1969]
(Series: An Evergreen black cat book, B-210)
(Series: Film book series.)

Moffitt PN1997.K8313

Main Stack PN1997.R28.K8313 1969a

Kusa, Zuzana

"Rashomon in Case Study Research."
Sociologia, 2003, 35, 1, 37-60

"The Rashomon problem/effect is characterized as the existence of contradictory evidence or testimony or mutually exclusive data interpretation in scientific research. The history of the term is sketched, identifying the title of Akiro Kurosawa's film as a source. The methodological implications of Rashomon phenomena are considered from an interdisciplinary perspective. It is shown how various disciplines & researchers dealt with the Rashomon paradox, concluding that some of the approaches are methodologically inspiring & transferable across disciplines. Three forms of the Rashomon effect are studied in particular: (1) the (mis)representation of the actual state of affairs; eg, ethnographic case studies presenting contradictory, yet trustworthy, accounts of a particular event (divergent reconstructions of social memory); (2) conflicting & contradictory interpretations of data, each coherent & empirically well-grounded in empirical evidence; & (3) a deliberate presentation of findings suggesting the possibility of multiple realities (stylistic Rashomon). Attention is devoted to the Rashomon phenomenon in the various disciplines of sociological research, showing how the paradox is a product of a "narrative rearrangement of reality" on the part of the study subjects or the researcher." [Sociological Abstracts]

"Naked Swords: The Zen Warrior Tradition and the
Intertextual Odyssey of the Nameless Ronin in Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro."Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 2000 Fall, 20:1,
53-67.

"The deceitful dead and the triumph of nothing : Kurosawa's Throne of blood." In: Crowds, power, and transformation in cinema / Lesley Brill.
Detroit : Wayne State University Press, c2006.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.C67 B75 2006

Clifton, Charles H.

"Making an Old Thing New: Kurosawa's Film Adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth." In: Ideas of order in literature and film : selected papers from the 4th Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film
Tallahassee : University Presses of Florida, 1980, c1981

Places Wu Hsing-kuo's Kingdom of Desire (an adaptation of Macbeth for Beijing opera) into the context of his attempt to revitalize the form in Taiwan; examines the indebtedness of his adaptation to Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood; and considers its reception by English critics.

"Making an Old Thing New: Kurosawa's Film Adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth."

In: Ideas of order in literature and film: selected papers from the Fourth Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film / edited by Peter Ruppert; associate editors, Eugene Crook, Walter Forehand. pp: 52-58.
Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1980, c1981.

"Macbeth on Film: Politics." In:
Shakespeare and the Moving Image: the plays on film and television / edited by Anthony Davies and Stanley Wells. pp: 250-60.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Compares Akira Kurosawa`s Throne of Blood to Welles´s and Roman Polanski`s Macbeth. Of the three films, finds that Throne of Blood "is the most akin to Shakespeare in the grandeur and spaciousness of its vision." Revision of "Macbeth on Film: Politics,"Shakespeare Survey 39 (1987): 67-74.]

Serper, Zvika.

"The bloodied sacred pine tree: a dialectical depiction of death in Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran'." (Akiro Kurosawa)(Critical Essay.Journal of Film and Video v52, n2 (Summer, 2000):13 (15 pages).

'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran' are Akira Kurosawa's adaptations of William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear,' respectively. Both films are influenced by conventions from Japan's no theater, especially in their depictions of death.

"Variations on a Theme: Yojimbo, a Fistful of Dollars and the 'Servant of Two Masters'."
Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 79-90, Spring 2004.

Von Mueller, Eddy

"Naked Swords: The Zen Warrior Tradition and the Intertextual Odyssey of the Nameless Ronin in Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro."Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 2000 Fall, 20:1,
53-67.